A very good article espousing animal rights. Not being a animal rights believer myself, it takes a lot for me to agree with such opinions. However, this article comes close, grabbing my attention with the very first powerful paragraph. In 55 BC, the Roman leader Pompey staged a combat between humans and elephants. Surrounded in the arena, the animals perceived that they had no hope of escape. According to Pliny, they then "entreated the crowd, trying to win its compassion with indescribable gestures, bewailing their plight with a sort of lamentation." The audience, moved to pity and anger by their plight, rose to curse Pompey — feeling, wrote Cicero, that the elephants had a relation of commonality (societas) with the human race. Interestingly, it also contains many ideas that can be applied just as well outside the context of the argument on animal rights. Sympathy, however, is malleable. It can all too easily be corrupted by our interest in protecting the comforts of a wa...
KPS Gill argues that the Muslim community must rise up in rage against those who are calling for violence as a form of protest against the cartoons. He also mentions that the radicalization of political discourse and demonization of non-Muslims in islamic countries creates an atmosphere for terrorism, even though it is obvious that terrorists are a miniscule proportion of the Muslim population. There is an American Indian saying: 'it takes an entire village to raise a single child'. Similarly, it takes a very large community, often entire nations, to raise a single suicide bomber. Instances of enlighted opinion among the Muslim community have been documented elsewhere. However, they have been drowned by the violence of some of the protests.
A piece about the recent controversy surronding attempts by quasi-religious groups to introduce Intelligent Design as a scientific alternative to Evolution. The article is long, but it does take more than a few words to explore all aspects of the issue.
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